Now that you mention it, Nin -- or more accurately I suppose I ought to say, now that you mention my mentioning it -- I guess that is not exactly the sort of image that generates a great deal of festive heat under the old mistletoe. (The cobwebs, however, seem to be fine with it.) But Christmas does bring out the Grinch in the agéd and infirm, I suppose. Even Bob Cratchit may have ended up a morbid old social problem, scribbling gloomy, illegible-in-the-morning notes to himself, with a failing ballpoint, on the backs of spent bus transfers.

When I opened this, at first I thought it read "Silver," which matched my perception of the light. Then I re-read the title, read the poem and took in the other images. Robert Holmgren's Sicily photo is extraordinary, but the power, order and insinuating implications of the entire piece is really fine, seasonal defective disorder (which you should really trademark) and all. Curtis

There’s even a good laugh to be found in here sometimes: “Seasonal defective disorder.” Good one, bub. The poem puts me in mind of the indefinite self, and other permutations on chance. Down the hatch! Great post.

I too first read "Silver," then the "thin/ sliver of light" brought me back to a recalibration of that first word, "silver" and "sliver" "across the slender divide" which separates the position of one letter from that of the other, one person from another, from here to there.

Yes, it's funny -- hard not to think (type) the word "silver" for "sliver"... so easy to make that slip, in fact, that lately the slightly bruised neurotransmitters have come to always expect the slivers to have a silver lining. But that may not have been in the playbook,